Winter, 750:
(Six years before)
Not every dream was for screaming.
When she was younger they were sharp: vivid images, scattered and always charged with fear. They were Magitek soldiers leaving Tenebrae in flames. They were daemons in the dark, flashing hideous faces where they were least expected. They were fires and floods. But as she grew the dreams grew, too. They became people and places in the past, present, and future. Sometimes they left her frozen and staring at the ceiling above her bed. Sometimes she woke naturally, but without any clear sense of what was real. And some nights… some nights she woke with a sort of clarity that she never achieved in any other way.
Clarity, she learned, was worse than all the alternatives put together.
Reina woke all at once, without a sound. Her eyes were open, the bedroom around her sharp and in focus in spite of the darkness. And in her mind was a terrible truth that she had never wanted to know.
Her feet hit the cold floor. She didn't bother to put on a robe or slippers. The walk to her father's room wasn't a long one. As if in a trance, she moved, her eyes shut for half of the walk. Behind her eyes were images from the dream. They always lingered on for a time after waking, but these she would never forget. She knew it without knowing how.
There were crownsguards outside the king's room, like always, but they didn't impede her. She was a frequent enough visitor, even in the middle of the night, that it was no longer odd. The door closed behind her and she was left in the cool quiet of the sitting room attached to the king's chambers. She didn't hit the lightswitch, but simply moved through the open doorway to the right.
Her father was asleep. It only made sense; the great clock against the wall read some time between two and three in the morning. The only light was the city light that filtered through the floor-to-ceiling windows opposite the clock, but it was enough to navigate by, especially in such a familiar space. Reina picked her way across the room and slipped beneath the blankets to join her father. It was a comforting warmth as she pressed up against him. The smell of cedar and clean linen rose up to meet her and she breathed it in. It might have been grounding if she had been floating. She wished she was. Instead she was standing square on the ground seeing so sharply that it hurt.
"Reina…" He didn't usually sleep through her unscheduled visits, but she hadn't wanted him to, anyway. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her. She didn't quiver. She just slid her arms around his neck and hugged him, needing the touch but not the anchor.
"What have you dreamed, my dear?"
There was no need to ask why she was there. He knew. She met his gaze levelly and the king smoothed hair back from her face, then paused, noting her expression. His eyebrows lifted. Perhaps he had expected to find her teary-eyed and afraid after an unsettling vision, but this hadn't been that sort of night.
"'When darkness veils the world, the King of Light shall come'," she quoted the prophecy that they all knew well. "It wasn't stated that Noctis would purge the darkness with his own life…. But you always knew."
It wasn't a question.
There was no missing the surprise on his face, this time. When it faded he shut his eyes and leaned forward so his forehead pressed against hers.
"Have you told him?" He asked.
"No, Father."
His eyes opened. "Please, Reina, swear to me you never will."
She was too close to the dream to feel any particular surprise. She promised without hesitation. "I swear, Father."
He let out a breath and crushed her against his chest, pulling her along as he shifted onto his back. She lay there with her arms around his neck and her head against his collarbone for several breaths. Then she lifted up onto her elbows to look down at him.
Her father. She had never really noticed before, but he looked tired. There was more grey in his hair than she remembered. She touched it lightly. It had been all black six years ago; at this rate it would be all grey in two. The knowledge of her twin's fate weighed heavily on her mind, but he had carried it for nearly ten years on his own. Not anymore.
"Now there are two of us. I will bear this with you," She pressed her cheek against his and settled her chin on his shoulder.
He tightened his hold on her, letting out a sigh. "It is not a weight I would have willingly given you... All the same, it is lighter for the sharing."
